In the past few months I have been very lucky to have been kept busy creating a number of personalised map commisions, for clients in the UK, USA and Germany.

Most of the requests for personalised illustrated maps have come from families who have been separated due to the lockdown, unable to have the celebrations they had planned and were looking for a special gift filled with their favourite memories to show their loved ones how much they care.

I love making these personalised commissions. It is always so heartwarming to read through the list of ideas that people put together, see the family photos from the 1980s and hear the amount of love and attention that has gone into their planning for the map.

The first image here is an artwork created to celebrate Jim’s retirement after 33 years working as a submarine engineer. His wife and children put together a fantastic brief for me, filled with photos of Jim’s passions and hobbies, their family’s homes, the pets and the beautiful town where they now live.

Map no. 2 was commissioned by a group of 12 grandkids, for their grandparents’ 60th wedding anniversary. Map no. 3 was commissioned by a group of 7 friends, for their friend Mandy who had moved to Northern Ireland, and is filled with their shared memories of their time spent together in London.

I am SO thrilled to be working with Take a Walk in, a company from Berlin who create gorgeous hand drawn neighbourhood walking guides. I am designing the map for the Shoreditch & Hoxton London guide.

TaWi have produced guides of Prenzlauer Berg, Mitte and Kreuzberg in Berlin, then Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon, and Madrid. The guides feature shops, boutiques, interesting buildings and snippets of local history, bars, venues and restaurants.

I started working on the map earlier this year, and planned launch is Autumn 2020.

I received a lovely photo from newly weds Sonja and Rob, who I recently created a personalised wedding map artwork for! They are posing with their cat Simba, who also appears in the artwork. Sonja commissioned the custom artwork as a surprise wedding present for her future husband Rob. The personalised artwork features the extensive travels that they have done together, from meeting on a beach in El Salvador, to driving through central America in their camper van, to the proposal made whilst sheering a sheep in Berlin! To read more about this project see the project page here.